Alabama

SEC and Big 12 begin basketball challenge series next season

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- After seeing its men's basketball series with the Big East end, the SEC announced today a new one is beginning with the Big 12.

The Big 12/SEC Challenge begins next season with Alabama playing host to Texas Tech on Nov. 14 in a previously-scheduled game, and Auburn traveling to Iowa State on Dec. 2. The highlights of the 10-game package spanning over a month are Kansas at Florida and Kentucky vs. Baylor.

All 10 of the Big 12's teams and 10 of the SEC's 14 schools will participate in the annual event on ESPN networks. Arkansas, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee will not play in the first year.

Eight of the 10 games in 2013 are at home sites, with each conference having four home games. Two matchups will be at neutral sites in Texas -- Kentucky vs. Baylor in Arlington and Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma in Houston.

The inaugural event is a combination of existing games already scheduled along with newly created matchups. The title of the series will rotate to SEC/Big 12 Challenge in 2014. An SEC spokesman said the length of the series contract has not been finalized yet.

The previous challenge series between the SEC and Big East never caught on with the public. During the first four years of that challenge, only four games were played each year. That morphed into 12 games during the series' final two seasons. Of the 40 games played in the SEC-Big East series, only seven involved two ranked teams.

The Big 12/SEC Challenge won't have a game next season on the same date as the SEC football championship, a challenge that the past series with the Big East experienced. Last year, Alabama completed its basketball game against Cincinnati opposite the Crimson Tide football team playing for the SEC championship.

This new series is another partnership between the SEC and Big 12 since the acrimony of Texas A&M and Missouri switching conferences. The SEC and Big 12 paired together to create a new and lucrative "Champions Bowl" -- now the Sugar Bowl -- within the playoff system.